Flesh-&-Bone(81)

The key to all of it was the ranger named Joe.

Joe would soon beg to reveal the secrets of Sanctuary. The sinner would tell Saint John everything and anything he wanted to know.

And Saint John would not mind at all if Joe had to scream his answers.





52

LILAH WOKE WITH A START AND IMMEDIATELY GRABBED FOR HER GUN, DREW it, raised it, and pointed it, all in a fraction of a second.

“No,” said the man who sat across from her.

Beside him a monster of a dog growled a deep-chested warning.

“Who are you?”

Before the man could answer, a wave of nausea struck Lilah, and she turned away to throw up.

There was a small pit in the ground already there in case she needed to throw up. Lilah quickly bent over it. The retching and spasming hurt. A lot.

But strangely, not as much as she’d expected it to.

She clutched the pistol, still pointing it in the general direction of the stranger. When her stomach had nothing left, she sagged back and gasped.

“There’s a canteen with clean water and a cloth to wipe your face,” said the man.

She studied him warily. He was a big man, lean but muscular, with blond hair shot through with gray and a face that was cut by laugh lines and scars. Deep blue eyes and very white teeth. He wore jeans and a camouflage T-shirt. There was an automatic pistol holstered on his right hip and a sheathed katana placed within easy reach on the ground.

“You’re not Tom Imura.”

“Ah,” he said. “That’s what you meant.”

“What?”

“Before you passed out, you called me Tom.”

Lilah said nothing. Instead she appraised the dog. She had seen mastiffs before—they were popular among the bounty hunters. The dogs were fierce, powerful, and able to take down anyone—man, zom, or apparently, a full grown wild boar. This dog was one of the biggest she’d ever seen. Easily two hundred fifty pounds. Probably more. His body was wrapped in a coat of light chain mail, and long bands of segmented metal ran from shoulders to flanks. Metal spikes stood up along the bands. A horned war helmet sat unbuckled by the dog’s feet.

The dog had dark eyes that were filled with intelligence and controlled hostility.

“Who are you?” Lilah demanded again as she shifted her aim from heart to head.

“Before you pull that trigger, let me ask you something,” said the stranger casually. “Does that gun feel right to you? I mean, does it feel like it’s fully loaded? ’Cause I’m thinking it doesn’t.” He held up the slender magazine. “Bullets are kind of heavy, don’t you think?”

Lilah glared at him and then turned the pistol over. The slot at the base of the grip was empty.

“I may be getting old,” mused the man, “but I’m not senile. Not yet, at least.”

She cursed.

“Jeez, they teach you those words in school? What is the world coming to?”

He balanced the magazine atop a small rock that lay between them. Lilah knew that even without her injuries she could never get it, slap it into place, rack the slide, and fire before the man and the dog were on her.

She lowered the gun.

The man smiled and picked up a metal spoon to stir a small pot of soup that hung over a tiny fire. The soup smelled wonderful.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

“Well, I’m not Tom Imura, that’s for sure, I think we can both agree on that. Maybe you don’t know the man, but he’s Japanese and I’m a blond-haired, blue-eyed all-American boy from Baltimore.”

“When I first saw you . . . you were in shadows,” she said. “And you have the same sword.”

The man nodded at the sword slung on the ground. “Similar sword,” he corrected. “Tom carries a Paul Chen kami katana, or he did last time I saw him. And he slings his over his shoulder.”

Lilah said nothing.

“My name’s Joe,” he said, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the dog. “That’s Grimm. He’s the brains of this outfit, and he’s made it pretty clear that I exist to fetch and carry for him.”

Grimm made a wet, glopping sound with his mouth. Perhaps it was an agreement.

“We’re in a safe place,” Joe continued. “No bad guys, no walkers.”

Lilah looked around. They were in a natural shelter formed by two massive red boulders. A quad motorcycle was parked in the shade. Joe noticed her looking at it.